Bed Shopping

When did buying a bed become such a monumental undertaking? The price of a mattress set and a bed are approaching the cost of a car in the sixties.

We have been enduring the same bed we have slept in for the past 23 plus years. I happened to mention we were in the market back when I worked for a structural engineering firm. As it happened, one of the partners had a son-in-law or something who was selling a used waterbed. We got the address and drove over to check it out. the box for the mattress had been cobbed together and the whole assembly sat up on concrete blocks. If I remember it right, the whole thing only set us back 50 bucks or something and we were set until I built a frame and replaced the bottom of the box with plywood a year or so later after we had moved into the house.

It was an old concept waterbed without baffles or anything fancy. Just a huge vinyl tube filled with water and a heater at the bottom. The mattress had to be replaced within a few years after my wife brought her old needlepoint habits with her. It seems she was accustomed to doing her needlework while sitting in bed and would slip the needle into the mattress while she was repositioning the portion of fabric she was working on or whatever it is that a person doing needlepoint needs to do. Oops! That did not work so well with the water mattress. I was able to repair it but the heater had been going too so we went ot and purchased a new mattress and heater.

Of late, we have not been getting restful sleep and my better half has been complaining of back problems. It is time to shop.

Once the sticker shock set it, we realized it will not quite be time to buy. Not at least until the mortgage is paid off at the end of the year and we have adjusted to the car payments.

We were hoping to put off the cost of the frame until the financial effects of the mattress set investment wore off. Instead, we discovered that the box we have, although plenty long, is a few inches short and the king size mattress set will not fit.

The cost ranges from $700 or so on the low end to approaching $1500 on the high end. Then there are the choices of firm. plush, pillow-top, traditional, pressure-equalization, and something called viscoelastic memory foam.

Next comes the point where we have to compromise on our selection. I want something more on the firm side that is less pricey. She wants something less firm and pricier. She can see discernable differences and I am not able to see a huge difference between the, choke, less expensive mattresses ($700 is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination) and the high end build-a-shrine-for-it ones.

I never would have though I would have to consider taking out a loan just to get a decent night's sleep.